The fascination with Johann Arndt and with his major writing, True Christianity (“Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum,” Spring 1606), is due to the fact that this work is at once protest and program. His protest places Arndt in the unenviable position of waging a war on two fronts: on one front, against the noticeable decay of a self-conscious Christian society held in suspense—and imbalance—long before the military disruptions caused by the Thirty Years War and long outlasting the concluding